Google will no longer accept integrations for Verified Calls and the feature is fully turned down from Jan 31, 2023.
Businesses call millions of consumers every day, but many consumers don't answer calls unless they recognize the caller. Calls from unverified phone numbers can also cause stress as scam call rates increase. The Verified Calls feature provided by Google through their Phone app increases call answer rates, builds trust, and helps consumers by presenting calls from legitimate businesses with verification, branding, and call reasons.
Therefore, the Google verified API has been integrated with the Exotel Connect use case(Connect Applet and Leg2 of call connecting 2 numbers) so that the call from the Exotel platform can be verified for the tenants that have the feature enabled.
In order to enable Google verified calls for a customer, first collect the below information about the brand and how you customer wants the agent to appear to users.
Brand name
Agent name, as you want it to appear to users (maximum 18 characters)
Agent logo (500x500 px PNG or SVG with clear or white (#ffffff) background), as a publicly available URL
List of phone numbers of the agent
Call Reason(At the moment, we leave the call reason as blank. Only if the customer has a business impact due to this, it can be taken up. This needs extra effort by TS) .
The steps involved to add a new account in the Business Communication portal is below:
1. The ABIX flag VERIFIED_CALLS_ENABLED needs to be enabled for GVC for the tenant.
2. Create an Agent in the Google Dashboard for the Brand.
3. Add the details as collected from the customer along with the list of the VNs for that tenant in the E.164 format, one per line.
4. The next step will be to add the call reason. If the customer has requested something specific, then it can be added here. If not, then mention the brand name and proceed. It will not be shown until changes are made in the Obelix table by TS.
5. In the next step, the Brand representative details who will get the notification for the addition.
Once added, it takes some time for the account to be verified(few hours to 1 day).
Sample:
Here is how the agent(Brand) name and logo will be displayed to the end customer along with Verified Tag.
Google Business Communication Portal
The portal access is currently with Customer Success team and Partnership team for any new additions of the accounts. Please reach out to [email protected] in case of issues.
New admin users can be added from the user management page in the below link:
Use this page to add and remove access to your registered partner accounts. To switch accounts, use the dropdown in the top navigation bar.
To add a user, enter their email address in the email address input field and select the role.
Metrics
The metrics of the Google API can be checked from the Analytics dashboard on the portal.
https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/ae94e231-26a1-4f09-b192-3c6774b80955/page/DemuB
We have created internal Kibana metrics as well for Google Verified Calls.
Constraints
This is not valid for Parallel ringing use cases.
Google API has a throttle limit of 1000 API hits per second.
There will be a timeout of 400 ms for Google API hits and call would proceed to the dial out even if the GV API fails. This will prevent any impact of Google API failures on the normal call execution.
If you have any questions or concerns, please connect with us using the chat widget on your Exotel Dashboard or Whatsapp us on 08088919888.